Page 84 of Soul of Shadow
The vätte let out an excited squeak.
Charlie spun around to find that Mason and Abigail were already looking down at the vätte. He squatted beside Elias’s unconscious form, waving a crumpled piece of paper with one tiny arm.
“Nice work,” said Charlie, crouching to the vätte and taking the paper from him. She patted his hat twice, and he nuzzled happily into her palm. “Where was it?”
The creature pointed at Elias’s front jacket pocket.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Of course. He trusts no one but himself.”
Heart hammering, she unfolded the paper. This was their best shot. Their only lead to where Elias might be taking Lou. She flattened the paper on her knee, smoothing the edges with her palms. Together, she, Mason, and Abigail bent close to read it.
42.67, -86.21
Mason scratched his head. “A math problem?”
“No, you jockstrap.” Abigail snatched the paper from Charlie’s knee and reread the numbers several times. “They’re latitude and longitude coordinates.” She pulled her phone out of her purse and flicked open the screen, starting to type. “I’ll put these into Maps, and… yes. Here we go.” She flipped the screen around.
“TheOxford Power Plant?” Mason read. “You mean, the abandoned junkyard over by the beach?”
Abigail nodded. “Or what wethinkis an abandoned junkyard.”
“Exactly,” Charlie said, pointing at her friend. “Our whole lives, that area has been off-limits. Dangerous and unstable. Fenced in with a hundred warning signs. But we’ve only ever looked at it with human eyes, right?”
Mason eyed the screen skeptically. “You think the power plant is protected by magic? The way this house is?”
Charlie looked at the pin dropped on the map on Abigail’s phone. She stared at it for a few moments, thinking about all the times that she, Lou, and Sophie had played near the fence as little kids. All the times they had peered through its wire, hoping for a glimpse of whatever danger lay within.
It was back. That rush in her chest. The flutter in her belly. The tingle on her skin, like every pore had come alive at once. The same feeling that had ignited within her on the night of the first disappearance. The one she had condemned within herself as being wrong, twisted, a sign of just how broken she was.
But now?
When she looked back up at Mason, the skepticism on his face was gone. In its place:
Pure mischief.
As Charlie’s face stretched into a smile that matched her brother’s, a dozen memories flooded over her at once. Shared adventures with her twin sister and older brother. Pranks pulled on their mom. Snails hidden in the cupboards. A mural of multicolored markers drawn on the second-floor landing. She remembered then that it hadn’t always been Mason pulling the wool over his sisters’ eyes. It had often been the three of them—partners in crime and mischief.
Charlie held Mason’s gaze, excitement rippling between them. She raised an eyebrow and said, “There’s only one way to find out.”
37
As they set out from the old house, the forest felt suspiciously unmagical. Owls hooted. Crickets chirped. Leaves and sticks crunched beneath their feet. Charlie heard the distant whispers of what she assumed were fairies chattering, but that was it. Not even a snake or two-headed bird in sight.
All in all, the perceived calm made her uneasy.
Mason held out his metal bat as he walked. Charlie kept Sophie’s knife in her right hand and a rusty pair of kitchen scissors in the left. In the back of Elias’s closet, they’d found a spear-like weapon that Charlie prayed was made of steel, since she knew spirits of nature detested the metal. She’d given the spear to Abigail to hold. She’d also forced her to put on the protective steel necklace that Charlie always wore. If they made it out of tonight alive, she would have to buy them for everyone she cared about.
In addition, they each had a pocketful of gold coins, which Charlie found in Elias’s nightstand drawer. She figured they’d be safest if they each had something to give if they ran into a wood wife.
Last, they’d all turned their clothes inside out. Mason and Abigail had looked at her like she had lost her mind when sheasked them to do this part. She still had no idea if Elias had just made her turn her shirt inside out as a joke, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She rearranged the items hidden in her pockets, slipping the knife, leather pouch, and her lucky deck of cards into places that would be more easily accessible now that her dress was reversed.
They were as fortified as they could hope to be, but it still felt nowhere near enough.
To her left, a bush rustled, and Charlie spun around, brandishing both her knife and scissors. When her eyes fell on the bush, however, only a white-tailed rabbit emerged from its leaves and hopped into the distance.
Charlie exhaled. “This is ridiculous. I feel like I’m losing my—”
Just ahead of them, an ash tree split in two.
